Unfortunately pixel blending of materials is very expensive operations. To the point where using many separate materials on per polygon will be cheaper. It's best to combine both methods.
For lighting? It's rare that a vert bake looks good unless the mesh has a ton of extra polygons for no reason other than lighting... Flat surfaces need to be subdivided and just blech. :)
Yes, because what this industry needs is MORE POLYGONS!!! Let's further drive up the budgets of our games and have more studios shut down due to weak sales. But hey, you know, graphics.
Do we have any idea how UE4 handles hair/fur? I remember Epic started toying with it with UE3.9 (Samaritan). I'll be happy if games finally ditch rendering polygonal hair forever (save certain artstyles).
Only went 3 deep (sans alpha), but I completely get the theory behind it now. I can tell that assigning materials on a per-pixel basis instead of a per-polygon basis is going to be my new favorite thing. Can't wait to make this my own!!!!
I think the material editor is much easier to get close to marmoset PBR quality without headache, ( even though I find marmoset still better at displaying uncompressed texture, and bokeh DOF) also they removed the 65k polygon limit, so its good for showcase or concepting
I wouldn't worry about LODS unless you plan on pushing LOTS of polygons in a scene, or if you're working on an actual game production. If you're just bringin art in to the engine, it's not worth taking that step. Same goes for your hitbox creation (i'm assuming you mean Collision when you say "hitbox")
Well a big reason for budgets being driven up on a lot of titles isn't just the "we need moar polygons" but I know from personal experience a lot of "decision" makers can't do just that. Make a decision. Take this scenario. 2 artists, 2 designers and possibly a lighting artist working on a huge level for 2-3 months.…